IGN: Would you like to say something on the record about how the Skyward Sword demonstration went at Tuesday's press conference? What went wrong, and how can it be improved when the game finally comes out?

Miyamoto: Actually, we don't need to polish up the game -- what we need to do is polish up the technology that we use for demonstrating it on stage. (laughs) Because that's what the problem was. In the game itself, the play control is very smooth and it's very easy to play. I think if you get the chance to play it yourself, you'll realize that what we experienced on stage was just a technical issue.

And then you can also play the E3 demo and see those little areas where the questions are, and the item menu, and then look forward to what we might reveal about what other items are in the game.

IGN: One more question. With Apple and the iPhone, it seems like developers are adopting the platform as a good competitor to Nintendo's handheld market. Nintendo's pretty much dominated up to this point, but it seems Apple has become Nintendo's first real competition. Is the 3DS your answer to that competition?

Smooth play control.

Miyamoto: Well, there are always new competitors coming up. And particularly when cell phones really started taking off in Europe, a lot of people started saying, "Well, maybe you won't need a Game Boy any more. People can just plays games on their phone." And so it's a topic that continues to come up, but one we haven't really seen come to fruition yet. I think that for Nintendo, what's important for us is that we need to use our creativity to create products -- both in the hardware and the software -- that are unique and entertaining, and ones that you can only experience on our handhelds. And if we can do that, then people will want to buy our product and want to carry that device around with them. I think that particularly with Nintendo 3DS, we've shown that we've been able to create something that can't be done on another device. And for that reason, I hope that people will be looking forward to getting the 3DS.

IGN: You've been working on stereoscopic 3D games for years, since the NES days and even with the Virtual Boy. I'm wondering if maybe now that there's a system that doesn't need glasses, are there any ideas you had back in the day that weren't technically feasible then and that you'd love to bring back today?

Miyamoto: There are some ideas that we have. But what's really important this time is that, with the exception of the Virtual Boy, all of the 3D experimentation that we've done in the past has always been based around the idea of a 3D-enabling peripheral or accessory. But whenever you do that, then you've segmented the market and you have consumers who may have the peripheral and can see the 3D, and then consumer who don't have it and so can't experience the 3D.

And what that means from a game design perspective is that you then have to design each of your games in two ways -- one that takes advantage of it, and one that enables people who don't have it to also play it. So for us, the most important thing this time with Nintendo 3DS was creating that single environment where everyone who has the device will be able to experience the 3D. And what that means is that you're able to focus your efforts specifically on that one method, that one 3D kind of effect. And that's really going to allow developers to really find ways to take advantage of it and do new things with play control.

Well, sticking with this solution is one idea.

IGN: So is there specifically something that you worked on before that couldn't work because of the fact that you were segmenting the market, and you really want to bring it back?

Miyamoto: Typically I'm more the kind of a person who starts coming up with ideas after we've started working on a device, but having experimented previously with 3D over the years there are ideas that we have. Particularly ideas that we wouldn't have been able to do because of the segmentation, and that wouldn't have worked because of having to create the option of both 2D and 3D. Unfortunately I can't go into any details specifically on those ideas. Some of them you may see represented in the tech demos that we're showing. But we have a lot that we're working on.

IGN: It's clear that you guys understand that people won't really understand the 3DS until they pick it up and play it. At the press conference, you had to bring out 100 people just so that we could take a look at it. Do you think that's going to be an uphill battle, when the system comes out, to get people to understand that 3D can really change gaming?

Miyamoto: Well, it's true that having a big video in a presentation doesn't work. And trying to show the 3D effects through TV advertising is also going to be a challenge for us. So we understand that it's something that people need to see, and that when they see it we know it's very appealing. So keeping that in mind, we'll go forward with our plans and try to take advantage of that as best we can.

IGN: Do you have any ideas of how to address that?

Miyamoto: You can look back to other devices and see examples of things, like HD televisions being advertised on standard definition screens, or 3D movies being advertised on TV that aren't able to display things in 3D. So there are ways to go about doing it. But I think for us, what's most important is the knowledge that when people see it, they are impressed. So that's going to be important for us going forward.